We Could Be Sleeping in the Flowers (A Hermitcraft Story)

Chapter Six: The Collective

As it turned out, a night of restless sleep interrupted by the occasional fit of coughing didn't make a huge difference in Grian's outlook the next morning. His hair was still studded with clumps of lilacs, oddly unscathed despite being rolled on all night, and he was no closer to a permanent solution. But the day was beautiful and there was no sense wasting it. The Entity needed to be restocked and there was nothing like chopping a million trees to take his mind off his troubles.

The instant Grian stepped out his front door, though, he was divebombed from all directions. His sword was already in his hand before he realized that his loud attackers were not phantoms and the cackling yells were all "SOOOUUUUPP! SOOOOUUUP!" He groaned and sheathed his sword while Impulse, Pearl and Gem landed noisily around him.

"Grian!" Gem yelled, prancing right up into his personal space. "We heard you're sick!"

"Very sick!" Pearl agreed from just over Gem's shoulder. "The sickest!"

"You know what's good for sickness?" Gem asked with a wide, possibly slightly manic grin.

"I'm not sick!" Grian protested, raising his hands and taking a quick step back. He nearly ran straight into Impulse. "Who said I was sick?"

"Scar's pretty worried about you," Impulse informed him, mock-soberly. "He said you had allergies so bad that you were eating daisies and visiting Stress with no armor on."

"I had armor-" Grian huffed, then broke off when he realized that wasn't really the salient point.

"You know what's good for sickness?" Gem asked again, more insistently.

"It's SOUP!" Pearl answered for him. All three were suddenly thrusting bowls of soup in Grian's direction. Impulse's and Gem's looked fairly normal, but Pearl's appeared to have soggy little lumps of colored wool floating in it.

"When Scar realized how bad you were feeling, he asked us to stop by," Impulse explained. "We were going to come by last night, but I thought maybe we should do up a new batch of soup. Guaranteed not to be poisoned this time!" he added proudly.

"I make no such guarantees!" Pearl told Grian. "The poison makes it better."

"Anyway, you were eating flowers, you can't be that picky," Gem pointed out. Her bowl of soup was still thrust out at arm's length, practically embedded in Grian's jumper. She gave it an emphatic little shake and sent a few droplets flying out.

Grian grabbed the bowl in self defense. It was still hot, he noticed, and it actually smelled really good. His stomach immediately began reminding him that the "chop a million trees" plan had not included breakfast. "If I eat some soup," he asked the assembled gang, "will you tell Scar to stop worrying about me?"

"Oh, yeah, sure," Pearl assured him. "That'll definitely work."

"Why does Scar think you're sick, anyway?" Gem asked. "You look fine!"

"The hair flowers are a little weird," Impulse opined. "Is that a snack for later?"

"I think the hair flowers are cute!" Gem insisted. "And they smell nice!"

Grian chose to lift the bowl to his lips rather than answer any uncomfortable questions about sickness or hair lilacs. The soup was delicious, and he was barely surprised when his vision greyed out and disappeared. "I'm guessing that "blindness" doesn't count as "poison?" he asked ruefully.

"We wanted you to have a hard time getting away if we needed to do an intervention," Pearl told him, suddenly only half-joking. "Are you actually sick? Scar's not the most perceptive guy in the world, but he studies you almost as much as he studies theme parks and he thinks something's wrong."